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Hostility
Name: Hostility Physical Age: 35 True Age: 496 Gender: Male Faction: Sin Elements & Ranks: Essence - 4 Chaos - 2 Stone - 2 Water - 2 'Power' Hostility has garnered a variety of powers over his many years as a Sin, but his main ability is to manipulate essence in order to feed the life force of surrounding organisms into one target being. He can take the energy from nearby plants, animals and people, including himself or other immortals, and channel it into other life forms to heal them. In his early experiments with this power, it resulted in the demise of relatively large tracts of forest, as he conducted their life energy into himself to heal his many injuries incurred due to his then-new blindness. Over time, he learned to detect sources of life around him, how “alive” they were and their distance to him, which when combined with his acquisition of the chaos element, extended to grant him extra-sensory perception, so that he has a mental image of the world around him, both living and inanimate within 50ft of himself, and can detect stronger life forms, like humans or other immortals within 100ft. Over the years, he has also gained a measure of proficiency in stone and water, enabling him to manipulate the earth he stands on and to move streams of water to potentially drown out his foes. When frustrated, he’s also been known to alter the courses of rivers and streams to calm himself down, resulting in portions of the landscape being permanently altered by his whims. 'Weapon' Hostility wields a large pair of short swords, each attached to the end of a pair of 9ft long chains, which are connected to his belt, normally hanging coiled from hooks. These are used both in close combat, to rend his foes limb from limb, or are easily thrown and manipulated by pulling the chains, a combat technique honed by years of practice and training since his days as a mercenary. This ranged ability allows him to cut everything in a circle of 9ft radius, or to selectively cut anything within whipping range. The blades are made of relatively plain steel, rather thin for their length, without guards, so that they can fly easily and directly when thrown. The grips are more decorative, made of varnished ebony over the steel core extending from the base of the blades to the pommels. The pommels are simple rings, attached to the aforementioned chains, all of which are made of steel. These blades were very solidly made by a weapon smith in Indafell for him while he was a human, and were so well made and maintained by Hostility that they are still in almost exactly the same condition now that they were then. 'Summon' Hostility’s summon is a red-tailed hawk named Doyle. Before gaining his extra-sensory perception, Hostility relied extensively on Doyle to be his eyes, flying overhead or simply perching on his shoulder, and telling him what was around him. Doyle is fiercely loyal to his partner, and the two are extremely close, and also extremely alike. Doyle is very patient, and thinks things through before acting. As a result of being Hostility’s “seeing-eye hawk”, he’s also gotten very good at spotting and pointing out significant details of what he sees. Doyle is rather large, weighing in at ten pounds and a meter in length, with a wingspan of nearly two meters. With his bulk, he is too big to roost on Hostility’s shoulder as he did in their earlier days, and now will generally either soar overhead or find a particularly large tree to land on, or else simply stand on the ground. He has mostly reddish-brown plumage, with streaks of white mottled throughout. 'History' For all of his life as a human, Erik was around fighters. Living in Kalmas, his father was a blacksmith and his mother was an armour smith, so whenever he went into their workshop as a child, there was always some client or another buying or being fitted for equipment, and their careers fascinated him. As soon as he was old enough, his father taught him the basics of sword fighting, and his mother taught him how to properly use armour. When he was in his late teens, Erik decided to leave home to find work of his own. With armour made by his mother, and a pair of short swords forged by his father, he soon found work with a band of mercenaries in Fort Rhammak. He worked with their band for years, gaining useful combat experience, and new techniques, slowly rising up the ranks until, at the age of 34 he was their leader. To commemorate the occasion, he employed a master smith to forge his trademark short swords, which were kept at the ready at all times. Indeed, the older he got the more paranoid and hostile he became. As rival forces started encroaching on his group’s territory, more and more skirmishes over employment and territory broke out, often ending in the bloody murders of the opposing group’s leaders and of any members who wouldn’t join the winning faction. Just over a year after these skirmishes began, there were only two groups left: Erik’s, and an equally powerful rival. As had happened so many times in the preceding months, the two groups began to clash over employment, and so a vicious and bloody battle arose, with both forces being led into battle personally by their leaders. As their armies clashed around them, Erik took on his foe head on. However, despite his years of training and experience, Erik was inferior to his opponent, who chose public humiliation over straight murder. After his defeat, Erik was dragged into his hometown in chains as a sign to others that would try to edge into the mercenaries’ territory. He had his face horribly mutilated, starting by gouging out his eyes, then with repeated cuts and slices. Finally, he was burned alive, as much to get rid of the body as to cause as much pain in his final minutes as possible. But as he was burning, Erik stood up, walking over to his foe blindly, as he had been standing and gloating over the pyre, and pummelled him to death, before succumbing to his wounds. Upon returning to life as a Sin, Hostility didn’t do anything much at all for the first few weeks, learning to deal with his blindness and struggling to find his way around, even with Doyle’s help. Any humans he encountered ran back to their homes, warning their families and friends of a blind monster wandering the woods. Luckily, he never encountered any Virtues during this vulnerable time, and instead, ended up meeting some Sins who brought him to the Empire, where he became a healer for the Sins. Though he was capable of fighting, he wouldn’t participate in combat for many years, not until he had gained his extra-sensory perception and could effectively “see” again, and even still, it took him years of training before he deemed himself to be at an acceptable level of fighting prowess. From then on, he began training other Sins to fight and to harness his elements, as well as leading the charge into battle where he could, up until the destruction of the Empire, after which he remained at the Sins’ camp, guarding it and training whoever was interested, though without as much zeal and interest. Now, as things are heating up again, he has found himself back in his element, ready to fight the Virtues once again and to train the latest generation of Sins to become stronger and more capable. His most recent protegé has been Vanity, to whom he was giving instruction in the use of essence. In the past, he has also trained Arrogance in combat and, to a lesser extent, in the use of the chaos element. 'Appearance' Hostility stands at 6’5” and weighs around 275 lbs. He always wears a suit of full plate armour with a very distinct, blank mask, effectively a sheet of metal, bent to be worn over his entire face, with a sheet of leather cloth attached to the back to cover the back of his head and to hold the mask in place. This is because of the horrid degree of scarring that covers his entire body, in particular his face, which is nearly featureless but for the empty eye sockets and his mouth, everything else became a scarred mass of flesh covering muscle and bone. He always keeps every last part of his body covered as a result, preferring to save people the horror of seeing how hideous he is. Since he has no need to see anything, his mask is completely blank, no eye holes or features of any sort, with just the small amount of space between the bottom of his mask and his neck armour allowing in air, though he is used to the limited amount of air and from years of training, has enough endurance to avoid getting winded in long, drawn-out fights. Much like his mask, his armour was assembled more for its function than for appearance, all made of form-fitting steel custom made specifically for Hostility. There is not a single decorative marking or addition to the entire set, which is all made of the same sort of uniform steel plating as his mask, swords or the chains attached to them. 'Behaviour' Hostility is a very calm and calculating person, and doesn’t anger unless someone pushes him right to the edge. He is very confident, but not without reason, knowing from experience his exact limits and capabilities, and is extremely patient in addition to his other traits. Since gaining his extra-sensory perception, he has an excellent sense for the directions to everything around him; however, he generally doesn’t bother with facing people and has a tendency to remain very still. He likes to meditate on whatever matters are presently on his mind, sitting in the woods often for weeks at a time while training others in his elements. When standing or sitting anywhere, if he is addressed, he doesn’t move to face whoever is speaking to him, and will remain at whatever odd angle he may be. Because of this, and the expressionless, featureless mask that he wears, he tends to make others uncomfortable. As a Sin, he has done extensive work in training other Sins in both hand-to-hand combat and in the use of throwing weapons, as well as training them in his elements. In times of open war and conflict, he tends to be on the front lines, leading other Sins into battle and keeping them alive and well healed using his main power, as well as causing devastation among his foes with his weapons and by drawing energy from them to heal. For smaller brawls and sparring matches, he likes to have an audience, as much to teach his allies some of his combat techniques by demonstration as to strike fear into his foes and use the bystanders not aligned with him as a source of energy for healing. Another particular aspect of his personality is his almost excessive politeness. While he doesn’t go out of his way to appear human, he tries to offset the discomfort of those around him by being polite, and will also try to impose this politeness on his “protégés”, as he refers to those he trains or has trained, even when encountering the enemy, he will ask that all those present introduce themselves and acknowledge those present before any fighting or other interactions take place. He is intensely loyal to Taint, following her orders to the letter, though not without reason. If he deems that an order he was given was unreasonable, he will not obey simply because he was told to, and will question the purpose of the given objective until he is either convinced that it is worth the effort and time, or that it is to be ignored and thrown to the way side. Category:Characters Category:Sins Category:Essence Category:Chaos Category:Water Category:Stone